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At a San Marcos gas station, Ray Campbell fuels portable generator that his neighbor loaned him during the power outage. Campbell said he walked out of a Costco Thursday with "tons of frozen stuff for school lunches and my family of four and, boom, the blackout hit! But my good neighbor saved us!" Campbell is a commercial and TV actor, currently playing Tyrus Kitt in the TV series "Breaking Bad."

Alberto and Olga Calleja take their boys, Juan Carlos, left, and Jonathon on a mid-morning shopping trip. The fourth- and first-graders have an unexpected day off as all public schools across San Diego County were closed in the aftermath of the blackout.

Computer screens are dark, forcing Southwest Airlines staff to do manual check-ins at San Diego's Lindbergh Field on Friday morning. Lots of passengers stranded at the airport stood in long lines to get a flight out. Although power was restored at 3:30 a.m., computers remained down.

Passengers had to deal with chaos at Lindbergh Field when flights were canceled due to a massive power outage that began Thursday evening. Power was restored at 3:30 a.m. Friday but airlines were forced to do manual check-ins because computers still were not functioning.

Ralphs supermarket section manager David Leonard removes packaged chicken from the refrigerated section of the San Marcos store Friday. Most dairy, meat and fish products were taken from the shelves as a health precaution because power was off Thursday afternoon and through the night due to the San Diego County blackout.

Diannyra Bolata, 25 and her son Diego, 2 rest on the floor in the terminal at San Diego's Lindbergh Field after all outbound flights were cancelled. The El Paso family was trying to go home after vacationing in San Diego when their flight was canceled. They have no hotel or accommodations. The widespread blackout prevented use of security screening machines.

Neighbors on Cabrillo Avenue in San Clemente gather around a bonfire. The massive power outage left most of south Orange County without electricity, shutting down traffic signals, gas stations and causing gridlock.

Traffic on Crown Valley Parkway is gridlocked at rush hour after the massive power outage left most of south Orange County without electricity, shutting down all of the traffic signals. The power outage has affected a widespread area of Southern California from Orange County through San Diego County to Mexico.

Adelita Zamora, 14 is the envy of a lot of people in a long line of shoppers with the same idea at the Albertsons supermarket on Carlsbad Village Drive in Carlsbad. The store soon ran out of ice and because of the blackout was unable to make any more. Electric power was lost this afternoon across a wide swath of Southern California.

Librarian Nicole Orth uses a flashlight to help Kevin Mitchell find a book at the San Juan Capistrano Library in southern Orange County. The library closed about 30 minutes after the blackout for safety reasons. Electric power was lost this afternoon across a wide swath of Southern California.

Virginia Andrade of Oceanside pushes a shopping cart filled with goods past a long line of other people at the Albertsons supermarket on Carlsbad Village Drive in Carlsbad. Electric power was lost this afternoon across a wide swath of Southern California.

Massive blackout leaves 4 million customers without power [Updated]

As the sun came up Friday morning, businesses were reopening their doors and life was returning to normal after an unprecedented power outage left about 4 million people in San Diego, Mexico and other parts of Southern California without power.

Southern California Gas & Electric announced early Friday morning that the company had worked through the night to successfully restore power to all 1.4 million customers by about 4:30 a.m

More than 4 million customers lost power during a blackout in the San Diego area Thursday afternoon. San Diego Gas & Electric officials said the outage appears to have originated in Arizona and the outages extended across Southern California and into Arizona and Baja California.

We had a blast bbq, bomb fire, tea and just as we got to bed power back on, thank god the house was like an oven, to reserve power we only used one ceiling fan and slept in same room. I hope people would do that just for tonite. Good nite san diego and stay lit:-) Maysoun in spring valley, CA

Where to begin…. Work only 12 miles from my house and it took 3 1/2 hours to get home (no joke)… I could have driven to Vegas in almost that amount of time. People are crazy on the road and think you should blow through intersections when there is no where to go unless you want to end up in someone's tail pipe or in the trunk of their cars. People need to learn how to slow down and be patient in times like this. We had our tiki torches out and bbq'd and hung out with the neighbors and treated it like a mini camping outing. It was a blast although I can't say the drive home was nice but once I got home it was nice.

By: triplelt@gmail.com

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